OO Zombie Forest Carbon Emissions Haunt The Planet-Deforestation has several long-lasting effects on climate and biodiversity. Decomposing trees release a huge volume of lagging CO2, killing species and hobbling efforts to fight global warming, shows a new study.

Takeaways:

Deforestation starts off long term climate-changing emissions

Extinguishes species in the short and long term

Replaces the habitat with a warmer, drier, degraded one.

An acre of forest is lost every second.

Half the world’s forests are already gone.

With the continuing loss of natural carbon storage systems, “We’re losing the ability to really solve the climate crisis,” said Jeff Horowitz, the founder of the nonprofit Avoided Deforestation Partners.

When we harm forests, we harm ourselves...

VISUALIZE GLOBAL WARMING...

These videographics show how our fossil fuel burning is leading to an ‘out of control’ climate via (left to right) using up our carbon budget, increasing levels of CO2, and increasing surface temperature. That last one shows how heating has accelerated especially in the last decade.

OO Perfect Illustrations Of How The Climate Is Spiraling ‘Out Of Control’

GOOD IDEAS...

Credit Randy Scott Slavin

How Much More Space Is There For US?

OO Clean Energy Won’t Save Us - Only A New Economic System Can - time to pour our creative energies into imagining a new global economy. Infinite growth is a dangerous illusion.

Daily Climate Editor Pete Myers notes: The “energy density of renewables is insufficient to substitute for current uses of fossil fuels. We can live on 100% renewables, but society will be on a different operating system.”

An eco village in Amsterdam. Source EFFEKT at ReGen

OO How Eco-Friendly Communes Could Change The Future Of Housing - An increasing number of US landowners want to build commune-style villages that are completely self-sufficient and have a low carbon footprint.

OO Engineers Work To Cut Costs And Emissions In Geothermal Power where the US leads the world with 3+ gigawatts. Takeaways:

There is far more US geothermal potential;

The US Department of Energy is spending11+ Million

On projects to improve geothermal prospecting

And develop underground carbon storage.

OO US Company Launches a Corporate Clean Energy Research Network - Schneider Electric created the online network to help other businesses accelerate the adoption of renewables in the U.S. and abroad.

The New Energy Opportunities (NEO) Network helps corporate end users, solution providers, banks, law firms and others get the resources they need to accelerate renewable energy investments.

Drinking Water Is Endless - If You Desalinate ItThe Sorek desalinization plant in Israel. Courtesy of IDE Technologies

OO Israel Ups Its Water Efficiency driven by dry necessity. Researchers at the Zuckerberg Institute:

have pioneered new techniques in drip irrigation, water treatment and desalination.

have developed resilient well systems;

and biological digesters than can halve the water usage of most homes.

While the Middle East is drying up, “The only country that isn’t suffering acute water stress is Israel” says an institute researcher.

SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS...

Credit Vadim Ghirda at AP

OO Climate Change Increases The Risk Of War, Scientists Prove The heatwaves, droughts and other natural disasters expected to increase because of global warming are helping to push countries into armed conflict, particularly those already split along ethnic lines.

A statistical analysis of conflict outbreaks and climate calamities between 1980-2010 showed that nearly 25% of conflicts in ethnically divided countries coincided with “climatic calamities.”

Coming To Puerto Rico, and the rest of the US? Climate change has enabled zika carrying mosquitoes to spread.

OO Puerto Rico: Zika Could Affect 10,000 Pregnancies By Year’s End says the US Center for Disease Control, putting hundreds of babies at risk of catastrophic birth defects.

OO Los Angeles, CA: Wildfire Chases 20,000 People From Homes Nearby as it continued to rage through nearby drought-parched canyons and foothills.

Justice Is Calling

OO World’s Largest Carbon Producers Face Landmark Human Rights Case - the world’s largest oil, coal, cement and mining companies have been given 45 days to respond to a complaint that their greenhouse gas emissions have violated the human rights of millions of people living in the Philippines.

OO India: 1+ Million People Hit As Floods Worsen In Assam Tea Region submerging hundreds of villages, and inundating large swathes of farmland and damaged roads, bridges and telecommunications services recently.

A SWEET SPOT IN CREATING SUSTAINABLE POPULATIONS...

Triple Win: Using Profits to Provide Needed US Family Planning - Medicines360.org is key to creating a sustainable US population and bright futures for women - AND saving taxpayers many billions yearly in community costs by preventing unintended pregnancies. Source medicines360.org

CLIMATE CHANGE COSTS...

Wikimedia Commons

OO Southern Africa: Herdsmen To Central Bankers Count Drought Cost For Years To Come as drought wiped out livestock, pushed up food prices and caused power shortages and protests.

OO France To Support Grain Farmers After Crops Hit By Torrential Rains and lack of sunshine in late spring.

FIXING CLIMATE CHANGE

@@ A Simple And Smart Way To Fix Climate Change given by Dan Miller in 2014 at a Ted talk suggests a way to profit as we tackle climate change, by finally charging those who sell and use fossil fuels - and distributing the revenues back to all of us.

The strategy is sure to speed transition to clean renewable energy. What’s not to like? Check it out!

NATURAL REPERCUSSIONS...

Changing Seas Are Changing Fish like this Ocellated Wrasse. Credit Natascia Tamburello, University of Palermo

aka the Third Pole, it is the source of Asia’s 10 largest rivers, and their fertile deltas.

It is also a major engine of global weather.

Those rivers and deltas support 1+billion people in

China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

Measuring the Melt Chinese scientists have bee monitoring the area for several years. Credit Wayne McAllister

The Third Pole has heated 1.5 C (3 F) in 50 years;

500 glaciers have disappeared and the largest are melting rapidly,

Far faster than expected.

Watering Desert Oases Tibetan glaciers are also supplying water to 56 million people along part of the historic silk road in China. Credit Wayne McAllister

Initially, the melt will provide more water, but

Over the next 30 years it will decrease,

Drastically affecting agriculture in Asia,

And affecting weather globally.

FOSSIL FUEL FOLLIES...

Got Enough Pipelines Yet? This is a 2012 US pipeline map. Source US Dept of Transportation

OO Pipeline Expansion Threatens US Climate Goals, Study Says - pumping natural gas from the Appalachian fracking hub to consumers throughout the eastern U.S., commits the country to high carbon emissions.

help distract BLM from acceding to commercial exploitation of its resources

helped up donations to the BLM

Not bad, guys - what a model for other nonprofits!

Bob InglisSource www.pri.org

OO Ex Republican Congressman: His Party’s Denial of Climate Science is ‘Courting Disaster’ With Voters says Bob Inglis of South Carolina. The position is “out of step with where the science is and where the smart money is [which] is already moving to act on climate.”

OO Rockefeller Fund Divests From Fossil Fuels, Now Invests In Renewables - providing $10 million to Mainstream Renewable Power Ltd. to expand renewable energy in Africa.. The investment will help finance as much as $1.9 billion for green energy in Africa.

OO Molten Storage and Thermophotovoltaics Offer New Solar Power Pathway - by capturing heat from thermal solar plants and storing it in liquid metal, for ultimate conversion to electricity. The estimated costs would be a magnitude lower than turbine conversion systems, suggests a new study.

If You Don’t Vote For Climate Action, You Can Forget The Rest - in a climate-changing world of famine, drought, rising seas, giant storms and heat waves, there will be no security in jobs, health, wealth, or national safety. There will be chaos ensuing from increasing crises and disasters. Vote.

OO Global Warming Policies We Set Today Will Determine The Next 10,000 Years - of global warming, a new study shows — and whether our civilization survives or not: history shows that harmful climate change has destroyed civilizations before.

This time, it could be worldwide. Let’s keep “The Hunger Games“ in the realm of fiction...

How unusual has the weather been? No one event is “caused” by climate change, but global warming, which is predicted to increase unusual, extreme weather, is having a daily effect on weather, worldwide.

Looking above at recent temperature anomalies, much of the US and the waters surrounding it are experiencing warmer than normal temperatures: despite cool surface temperatures, the drought continues in California.

Much of the areas surrounding the North Pole are experiencing much warmer than normal temperatures - not good news for our Arctic thermal shield of ice. Hotter than usual temperatures continue to dominate human habitats.

There is, of course, much more news on the consequences and solutions to climate change. To get it, check out this annotated resource list I’ve compiled, “Climate Change News Resources,” at Wordpress.com here. For more information on the science of climate change, its consequences and solutions you can view my annotated list of online information resources here.

To help you understand just what science does and does NOT do, check this out!

Every day is Earth Day, folks, as I was reminded by this wild flower I photographed one spring. Making the U.S. a global clean energy leader will ensure a heck of a lot more jobs, and a clean, safe future. If you’d like to join the increasing numbers of people who want to TELL Congress that they will vote for clean energy candidates you can do so here. It’s our way of letting Congress know there’s a strong clean energy voting bloc out there. For more detailed summaries of the above and other climate change items, audio podcasts and texts are freely available.

To learn about more about global warming, climate change or greenhouse gases as well as the causes, consequences, solutions, definitions, facts and tipping points related to these subjects, click here.

To see our most current positions, opinions, comments, agreement or disagreement with this article, and/or possible criticisms related to the subjects or facts raised in the above article, click here. Then look for those subjects in the navigation links at the top the page.

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